Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li Movie Review

Share:

There's bad, and then there's Street Fighter bad. And what's worse than a Street Fighter movie but an unnecessary, unwanted sequel fifteen years after the franchise's heyday, starring a TV actress and lacking a plot? Yes, it's Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li.

One has to think that 20th Century Fox had this absurd idea when greenlighting the film that it would do well enough to fund several sequels titled Street Fighter: The Legend of Another Forgettable Character. Ah, Hollywood executives. You're so cute sometimes.

Video game adaptations are rarely successful or good, and Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li (from here on out to be referred to as Street Fighter, because I feel dirty using such a stupid title over and over again) is neither of those. I won't bore you with the details of the plot, because I was too bored to pay attention. All I know is that Kristin Kreuk, who is much hotter than she is a good actress and who has never once been able to effectively play intimidating, plays a young woman who is a kick-ass fighter who ends up having to fight a bunch of other thugs and bad guys. Chris Klein and Michael Clarke Duncan are among the other actors who were duped into thinking they were starring in a Martin Scorsese action-drama.

The plot is irrelevant because the movie is irrelevant, sloppily directed and edited without a sense of pacing, entertainment value or pulse. Having watched this film four days ago, I vaguely recall one or two action scenes that were neither epic in scope nor particularly well done; Kreuk does some cheesy wire work at some point, and I was done. Wouldn't it have been sweet if the director of The Rundown would have made this film? At least then we'd get the bone-crunching, painful, blow-by-blow street fighting one would expect from Street Fighter.

There's nothing of value that comes from this latest Street Fighter monstrosity, and hopefully it is the last we see of this franchise. Fox couldn't have expected much more considering Andrzej Bartkowiak was also responsible for the piece of crap that was Doom. At least there was no first-person perspective this time around.